Milk

We went to see "Milk" this evening, in English, thank goodness, as I hear that MaHa found the German synchronization horrible.

We went with friends, joking about helping her do her homework. She is studying sexology at Malmö Högskola (no joke, this is a Master's program) and a current topic is how homosexual and transgender people were treated and how they perceived themselves in earlier periods.

Since Sean Penn (rightly so) got himself an Oscar for this, we thought there would be a few more people in the theater, but maybe 10 people had bought tickets. Okay, it was a Thursday night.

I was transported back, back, back to my teenage years and leaving the US for Germany. The clothes! The hair! That horrible Anita Bryant, leading to one of many boycotts I participated in without really understanding the ramifacations of what a boycott was good for.

I visited a friend in Castro in the 80s, long after Milk's assassination hat jump started the Rainbow Revolution. The guy I asked directions from assured me that I did not want to go there. And indeed, it was strange, being more or less the only different-sex couple out walking that evening. But an amazing, almost tangible energy was in that place.

The editing of the film was just marvelous, entwining historic footage with made-up historic-like stuff. The telephone tree was very well done. I guess the story was a little slow, as it tried to stay true to real events. I liked it a lot, WiseMan's rating went down from 8.5 to 7 on a scale of ten after a long discussion in the car home, fighting our way through a tremendous snow storm.